And They Call it Bambi Love
by Vinelle
Summary: Some people get lucky and find the person they were destined for in their own lifetimes and within their own species, others don't. Bella was about to find out which of the two categories she fell into, and what costs may come along the way. Carlisle/Bella/deer!Edward.
1. Meeting Bambi

**Author's Note** : You know how sometimes you gotta give a little to get a little? Well, in order to get the devil to write a beautiful, exciting Bella/Carlisle thriller I have to offer up a Carlisle/Bella/deer!Edward fic in return. Sorry, people.

I can't believe what my life has turned into.

* * *

There are not a lot of places that fit the sound of their names.

Take Paris, for instance. She had never been there, but it had always seemed a bit disappointing to her that a city so old and so filled with life and culture should have a name that, for all that she knew that it was the other way around and the hen actually came before the egg, only really fit white kids with tacky parents. Rome, by contrast, had the regal weight one would expect from the city that once ruled the world.

Forks, too, had lucked out, though she didn't realize this until she moved back there to live with her father.

Forks, like branches cracking softly under your feet, a sound too rotted by rain and moss to be as the quick, dry snap of a twig would have been, was a quiet and unassuming name, with a cozy, homey sense, regardless of whether you actually considered it home or not.

Isabella Swan did not, but she was hoping she'd get there.

Eventually.

Her father had certainly done everything within his power to make her feel at home. He'd given her a car, fixed up her room and the fridge was stocked. Better yet, he'd left her alone as soon as she was safely installed in her room, and that was something she, ever the loner, greatly appreciated.

Still, there was no denying that the air all around her was humid and smelled like rain, even when she'd been at the airport, and no building they had passed on the drive home had been taller than a four or five floors. That in itself didn't bother her, she had never been a fan of outrageously tall structures anyway, but the sum of a town filled with humble, small shops and houses and the occasional splurge of a grey brick warehouse was that it felt lifeless.

Towns like Forks were the reason why the term «sleepy town» had come to exist in the first place. And coming straight from the bright, vibrant Phoenix Bella could only feel like she'd gone into exile. It was her own choice, yes, and she had never felt at home in Phoenix either, she'd been too awkward and lonely for that, but she couldn't help feeling pitiful.

So perhaps it was in an effort to cheer herself up that her pickup's maiden voyage (she was very disappointed to find that the radio was broken, otherwise she'd have played «Like a Virgin» because that is what dorks do when they're alone. As it was, she had to hum it herself, which did have the advantage of allowing her to change the lyrics to better fit the pickup. _I'd been driven, I was sad and red, but the mechanic made me feel, ooooh he made me feel, shiny and new_ …) ended up being into the town's outskirts, where the brave attempt at civilization that was Forks ended and the thick forest began.

When in Rome, do as the Romans, and when in Forks, introduce yourself to nature before the people because Forks _is_ nature, it just happens that people are living there. It felt… important, in a way, that she did this, like a show of respect to prove to whatever ancestral spirits that were probably watching them all from the trees that she was going to be a very good citizen.

And so she wandered into the woods, a bit aimlessly, a bit fearfully, for the path wasn't marked and there was no way she'd find her way back if she got lost, she had the feeling that she'd been wrong about Forks. For with every step further into the woods she was sinking further, not into a forest but into a quiet, misty world unconnected to civilization, one that might not be there if she were to return later with other people.

It felt supernatural.

Perhaps she should not have been surprised, then, by what happened next.

She walked at a leisurely pace, slow enough that she did not feel at risk of stumbling, taking in her surroundings. It was nice, being in the woods like this: already she felt a stone lift from her heart, for this kind of scenery would have been unheard of in Phoenix.

She could get used to this.

It was in that moment that she heard a strange noise. A whisper, like the sound of wind through leaves except blurrier, almost inaudible but for the certainty that she couldn't have imagined anything like it, and it came in an ominous crescendo that made her heart seized in her chest.

The sound, which couldn't have lasted more than two seconds, was replaced by a deer standing in front of her, and she froze completely.

They were standing maybe thirty feet apart, but it felt much closer, and the deer was watching her with a shrewdness that felt not at all deerlike.

As she looked into eyes that were an unnatural pitch black, three things became very clear to her.

One, this was her first time seeing a deer in the wild and yet it wasn't, because this was not a deer. Deer are jumpy, delicate creatures, all too aware of where they stand on the food chain. This creature, this not-deer, on the other hand, seemed to not so much have missed the memo so much as never been concerned with it in the first place. A wolf would be a fool to approach it.

Two, she was in danger. The look in its eyes was too shrewd and its stance was too bold for her not to be. She was the prey, make no mistake.

Three, this deer was the more heartbreakingly beautiful creature she had ever seen in her life. Its fur was a mesmerizing bronze color she hadn't even known existed, and even from a distance she could tell that it would be softer than the softest of kittens, and that was to say nothing of how perfect it was, as if Plato had been right about the cave allegory and she was looking straight at the original deer, the immaculate deer that all other deer had since tried and failed to emulate.

This knowledge came to her almost instinctually, a grim certainty rooted firmly in the same part of her that got scared witless by «The Blair Witch Project», just as she knew that running or screaming wouldn't do any good. Nobody could hear her, and deer are _fast_ anyway.

And so they stood there for what felt like forever but couldn't have been more than three or four impossibly slow seconds, the deer dissecting her with its eyes while she felt oddly removed from the whole situation, as if this was happening to someone else.

Then, clearly done considering her or perhaps giving up all pretense of being anything but a beast, the deer crept into a crouch- and pounced.

It happened so quickly, there was no time to flinch or even fully realize that the deer had moved beyond the primal _oh-_ that fell into her brain.

She would have died, of that there was no doubt, had something equally fast not crashed right into the deer right before it would have crashed into her, intercepting it.

The deer fell to the ground with the intercepting force, and Bella was stunned to find that it was a man. The two wrestled for a second, movements too quick for her to follow, before the man succeeded in kicking the deer back down the path, where it somehow landed on its feet and sank into an immediate crouch.

The man was just as fast, wasting no time in teleporting to right in front of Bella, where he too sank into a crouch, though with his arms spread out. He was shielding her, she realized.

The deer saw this, and let out a genuine, honest-to-God terrifying growl.

The man turned to look at her. He was blond, she realized dimly, and too beautiful to be human. «Run,» he said.

She wasted no time in obeying him, sprinting faster than she knew she was even capable of as the sound of trees breaking like matchsticks and stones cracking filled the air behind her.

* * *

She didn't say anything to Charlie about what she'd seen, and she wished the reason for that were that she thought it was all a dream or that she didn't think he would believe her.

Not that she thought he would, but that was not the reason.

No, if anything she felt that whatever she had seen out there in the woods was something she had not been supposed to see, something she was not privy to. Walking around telling people about it felt… graceless. Whatever she'd seen had not been of this world, and there was something in her that screamed in protest at the thought of sharing it with others. Doing so would reduce it to her go-to party anecdote, Bella's bizarre woodland adventure.

Scratch that, telling others would ruin it.

She went about her life as usual, going to school, meeting people and feeling not unlike a single rabbit that had been thrown into a pen of rabid hungry dogs as everyone clamored to get to know the shiny new student. It was exhausting.

She even noticed curious looks in the grocery shop as the occasional someone recognized Charlie Swan's long lost daughter, home again at last.

Summa summarum, the 1208 people living in Forks felt more like 12, all of whom except Charlie were decidedly clingy, and she was greatly saddened to find that much like in Phoenix she couldn't seem to truly connect to anyone, not even sweet Angela. She was constantly surrounded by people, which had the admittedly sweet benefit of making her no longer look like a loser, but she couldn't help feeling like a clown in a suit. A loner is a loner is a loner, and no matter how nice and inclusive her new classmates were she couldn't seem to feel like she was one of them.

But perhaps that was just status quo to humanity and she'd missed out on the confidence or zeal or whatever it is that makes everyone else be okay with it.

She would not have forgotten the incident in the woods, that much was impossible, but she had accepted it as a freak incident, a supernatural anomaly in what was otherwise going to be a very normal, boring life. If anything, she felt oddly honored to have witnessed what she did.

So perhaps she would have put the incident behind her, letting it remain a fond, strange memory in the back of her head making her just a little more likely to believe in stories of things that go bump in the night, hers and mother nature's little secret, but for the fact that a week later, on her drive back home from school and out of the corner of her eye, she chanced to spot that same beautiful bronze deer, standing right in front of Clegg's Hardware as if it had any business being in her world.

She turned her head to look at it, almost turning the wheel as well, only to find that it had disappeared in the fraction of a moment it had taken her to turn her head.

She would have thought she'd imagined it except there was no way, the deer had definitely been standing there, and it had been staring right at her.

It had been there _for_ her.

She drove slowly the rest of the way, let her pickup roll into the driveway more than she actually pushed on the gas, feeling no desire whatsoever for anything resembling speed.

She found her father in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and chuckling at something in the paper.

«Charlie?» she said, wishing her voice was stronger.

He looked up at her and must have seen something in her face because he put the paper down immediately. «What's wrong?» he asked, sounding slightly afraid of what she imagined he feared might be a Renée division problem.

She bit her lip and leaned against the doorway, not sure how to proceed or even if she should.

This moment was a decision, she realized, the pivotal moment where she decided whether to bring the deer and the man into the real world or not.

She felt no desire to, much like she imagined Persephone had looked at the grapefruit seeds and felt apprehension curl in her stomach for reasons she couldn't put into words, but Persephone needed to eat, and Isabella Swan needed to do the sensible thing, and the sensible thing was to not keep something that could be dangerous, life-threatening even, to herself. And she _did_ feel threatened.

And really, the deer should have known better than to come on onto her turf.

So, darting her tongue out to wet her lips and giving her father a smile that was her best shot at casual, serious and genuine all wrapped into one, she drew courage into her and asked, «Do you know anything about any weird deer in this town?»


	2. Stalked by Bambi

By the end of the month, Bella was almost positive that the deer was stalking her.

(A fact that by itself brought questions of whether the deer wasn't just a bizarre figment of her imagination after all. Unfortunately, some integral gut feeling did not allow these doubts to gain any ground with her, if only because her imagination never could have come up with anything as beautiful as that deer, but the thought that this deer had no damn right to be real remained.)

It was _everywhere_ : lurking in dark streets as she drove around town, outside of her classroom window when she was trying to focus, even in her own backyard, and it was always, always staring at her. And never for more than a second, never as anything more than a shadow in the corner of her eye, because when she turned to look at it more closely it would always be gone, and nobody else had seen it.

The deer seemed to be choosing its hiding places very carefully, always making sure there was a wall or a bush obscuring it from the view of others, and it somehow always knew when she'd spotted it and would flit away immediately, either way she never noticed anyone else staring in confusion at the place where the deer had just been.

She tried asking around, but no one, not even Mike, who she knew had been staring right out of the window too the day the deer's little head stuck out from underneath Mr Nicholson's car, seemed to take notice of it.

Not even Charlie had had the slightest idea what she was talking about, and once he'd realized she was serious he wanted to call her mother. She 180'd immediately then and changed the subject as smoothly as she could (which wasn't very smooth at all).

And so it was that Bella found herself stalked by a ghostly stalker deer in what had to be the world's worst subversive Disney retelling, and unable to tell anyone about it because it was just too absurd.

She felt a sad sort of kinship with Cassandra, but at least when Cassandra was proven right all of Troy got to suffer got to suffer alongside her for not listening to her. When Bella was inevitably proven right, she'd be only one mauled gruesomely.

Or whatever it was that the deer was planning to do to her.

She spent long hours in her bedroom, hours that could and should have been spent on catching up with her new classes, trying to figure that one out.

Faced with the powerlessness that deer had her subject to, deducing its endgame seemed the only way to take some of the power back. If she knew what it wanted from her she could act accordingly,

So here was this mystery deer, that first introduced itself by trying to kill her and now wandered around her daily life as if staking her out, and she couldn't talk to anyone about it. And isn't that exactly what all the textbooks warn against?

Switching up her daily schedule, going to different grocery shops and riding with friends didn't seem to help. The deer had even been there the day she ditched school and drove to Seattle instead, if anything she saw it more frequently that day.

Intrinsic in all of these things was the feeling that the deer knew exactly what it was doing, that it was laying out a neat path in front of her that she couldn't see but followed predictably, because she didn't know how to evade it. And when the circumstances were right and she was where it wanted it to be, it would do whatever it intended to do to her.

Perhaps she was to be abducted and made to live in the forest as its bride.

Her emotional response to this entire situation should perhaps have amounted to something more damsel-in-distress-like, such as terror with obligatory fainting spells each time she spotted it or even tender maternal compassion for this surely tormented creature, but as it was she felt herself grow angry with it.

She did try to confront it, once.

She'd been in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner and struggling with a particularly difficult stain on a cast iron when she chanced to look up and found herself looking straight into a pair of eyes like molten gold.

It had been standing just outside the open window, closer to her than it had ever been before, and its now yellow eyes were fixed on her, almost detachedly so. As if it had zoned out completely, happy to leave its gaze resting upon whatever was in front of it.

So she had put the dish down, leaned forwards and, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of making it disappear again, whispered «Hi».

And for a second, she honestly thought it might answer, because it had definitely heard her and it was _looking_ at her, like it had waited all its life to ask a great question and she'd just said she knew the answer, but then whatever spell was in the air broke and it disappeared again, and she could have kicked herself for not demanding an explanation for its behavior when she had the chance.

After that there was nothing she could do but carry on as normal, as though a mystical deer wasn't stalking her, as though they didn't both know that she knew that it was stalking her. It was almost awkward.

She might even have gotten used to this creepy new part of her life and resigned herself to this fate, at least until she figured out a way to get it to leave her alone, had she not had a second life-changing near death experience. This time it went down in the school parking lot, when Tyler Crowley lost control of his van and it went spinning straight towards her, where she stood trapped and soon-to-be sandwiched in front of her pickup.

She felt like her reality had suddenly become a waking dream, one where she couldn't move even though everything around her was moving, she could only stand there with her bag over her shoulder and car keys in hand as Tyler's van came at her as quickly as a car passing by on the highway and wonder why she wasn't trying to get away.

The van came close enough to fill her vision and she felt a dreadful, heavy calm, as though her body had realized its place on the food chain when cars are thrown into the equation and the futility of fighting. She drew in one last breath to prepare, as if she were about to go underwater- and then something bowled her over so she fell and there was a terrible noise, like a great rock breaking itself against a mountain, and the van stopped, inches away from her.

She looked up and right into a pitch black pair of deer eyes.

The deer was standing above her, legs planted on each side of her, shielding her, and the van was oddly wrapped around its side and legs, like a volvo pretzeled around a tree. Her mind replayed that crack, that heavy object-meets-immovable-force-sound for her, and, looking into those black eyes and seeing irrefutable proof of the deer's existence and supernatural abilities she couldn't help the awe she felt.

Perhaps she'd hit her head, because God help her, she reached out a hand to touch its beautiful fur. And perhaps she overstepped some boundary laid down between mortals and the divine there, or perhaps the deer was just an ass, because it flinched back before she could touch it and was gone in the next instant.

She became aware of people screaming around her, calling hers and Tyler's names, saying things she didn't care to distinguish and pulling her up and out from between the two cars. The ambulance arrived impressively quickly, and so, not for the first time in her life because Bella Swan had been an injury magnet since before she could walk (literally, there was a scar on her elbow from the time she wiggled out of her carrier and fell right on linoleum flooring), she soon found herself in the local hospital's ER.

«I'm fine,» she tried reassuring the nurse, but the woman paid that little mind, asking if she had a medical history or had been in any foreign countries recently. Bella wished she had the deer's abilities, she'd have been outta there and halfway home already, leaving no trace but Bella-shaped holes in various walls and doors as she thundered on.

The thought got a giggle out of her.

«I'm glad our new patient's in a good mood,» an approaching man's voice said. A beautiful voice, she thought, a warm but firm tenor. She looked up at the speaker, curious to see the face accompanying a voice as pleasant as that, and felt her jaw drop in shock.

It was the man from the woods.

He was as beautiful as he had been then, flawless in a way she never even knew faces could be. Seeing him inside felt like anathema, though: even if she hadn't associated him with the deer he'd still have been that wild thing from the woods, that half beast half angel who saved her.

Here he was wearing a doctor's uniform and lit by fluorescent lights, and he fit in about as well as he would have in a kindergarten.

His eyes widened slightly upon meeting hers, but that was all. She wouldn't have caught that split-second surprise if she hadn't looked for it, and even then she had to admire his composure. It was certainly better than hers: she was gaping at him.

«I'll take it from here, Jenny,» he said, voice more subdued this time. The nurse nodded and left and Bella could only marvel at this man clearly being a regular part of the hospital household, just another doctor to his colleagues working there.

He gave her a warm smile, though she could tell it was stiff around the corners.

It should have been reassuring, that smile, because it looked very human, it had all the details right, from the slight twist of his lips to the calm look in his eyes (golden, just like the deer's that day in her yard, she saw), but his skin gave him away.

It was _exactly_ like marble, only worse, because even marble usually has little pores and currents of different colors that reveals its true rock nature. This man, thing, doctor, whatever he was, had no such flaw. His skin was utterly flawless and colorless, like Michelangelo's David given life, and his movements were purposefully roughed up and slowed down so as not to let anyone know he wasn't human.

She wondered how the people hurrying about could fail to realize that he wasn't like them.

Like with the deer, it appeared that it was just Bella's lot in life to be surrounded by people and look straight at the supernatural, and not have anyone else realize.

«I'm doctor Carlisle Cullen,» he said in a soothing voice, adjusting his smile so it better fit the polite doctor role he was playing. He didn't extend a hand for her to shake, though, busying his hands with thumbing through the notes the nurse had handed him instead. «I see you had an accident at school.»

Bella nodded, marveling at the absurdity of the situation. «Sure,» she said.

He ( _Carlisle_ , she mentally corrected herself. The name fit him, musical and timeless, _this man is not your white picket fence and barbecue American neighbor_ , and it made him definable. Now if only the deer had a name as well!) smiled again, a beautiful smile that made her want to smile dumbly back. «Looks like you got lucky,» he said, following the script of a normal doctor interviewing an ignorant girl.

She ought to follow the script too. In fact, she meant to.

But that's not what came out.

«No, I didn't,» she corrected before she could stop herself. Carlisle raised his eyebrows at her. _What are you doing, Bella, stop and think!_ her brain screamed at her, but Bella's mouth was living a life of its own, «the deer saved me,» she continued.

Carlisle froze. «He what?» he blurted, eyes wide with terror. Then, in the least convincing acting performance she'd seen since Renée tried to sound British in an amateur theatre production of «My Fair Lady» he gave her another reassuring smile, «You were in a very stressful situation, Miss Swan, and the nurse thought you might have hit your head-»

«I won't tell anyone,» she interrupted, and his smile disappeared while his skin seemed to somehow get even paler. «And, uh, just call me Bella. Just… don't worry about it, okay?» she rambled.

He stared at her in disbelief, and she took the time to study his face more closely. Here, in a peaceful environment where no one was moving with super speed or trying to eat young virgins his face held none of the wildness it had had in the woods that day. Besides the obvious beauty the man radiated kindness in a way she associated with priests and grandmothers, and this made her feel safe in a way she hadn't since that first encounter in the woods.

She wanted to keep this a secret for him.

Finally he pulled himself together and, still not touching her, gestured for her to tilt her chin up so he could shine a flashlight into her eyes.

The next few minutes were silent as he examined her head, reflexes and general health, only breaking the silence every so often to ask if something or other hurt or if she would say «Aaaah». Eventually he straightened, folded the journal together and nodded at her. «You look fine to me, it seems you got away lucky. I'll… I'll go discharge you,» he said, and turned to leave.

«Great,» she muttered, feeling oddly forlorn for reasons she did not want to look into. «Thanks,» she added, loudlier.

And this was when fate at last reached out a helping hand to her, because Carlisle stopped mid-stride and spun around to look at her. His intense golden eyes fixated on hers and oh, how could anyone mistake this man for human, «Should- If you need anything, you can call me.»

He strode over her, ripped a piece of paper off of her journal and wrote a number in a beautiful (and _legible_ , thank the heavens) cursive and held it out to her. She accepted mutely.

«Don't hesitate,» he said.

«Thank you,» she replied, and smiled the widest she had in weeks.


End file.
